Cassie's Hope (Riders Up) (2 page)

Briefly she
hesitated. “Hell no! I’m not sorry at all.” Jumping up from her chair, she
flung her napkin at him. “You can pay the bill, asshole. Goodbye and have a
good life. Try not to choke on your fortune cookie.”

Grabbing her own
cookie, she stormed out of the restaurant without looking back. On the
sidewalk, fighting back tears, she ground the cookie in the palm of her hand
until she could read its contents: “Changes will lead to hope and romantic
intrigue.” Right!

Crumbling the
paper, she flung it in the gutter. “You’re full of shit, too.”

- o -

Her three best
friends sat in Cassie’s North Side apartment stunned, not knowing quite what to
say after hearing her news.

Traci Steele, the
tall dark-haired lawyer, flashed her a smile and spoke first. “You can count on
me, Cass. Let me know when you have a horse running and I’ll try to be there. Haven’t
been to the track in ages. Should be lots of fun.”

“Fun? Hanging out
with gangsters? Taking money from the poor? No way I’ll go to a race track,”
Susan Jackson declared adamantly. The tall blonde looked down her nose with
shocked disapproval.

Cassie shrugged,
smiling. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

“Well, I don’t. And
I can’t imagine you dumping Dirk Johnson. Have you totally lost your mind? He
would’ve been such a catch.”

“You can have him
if you want,” Cassie said cheerfully. Susan’s reaction had not surprised her at
all. Now that she thought about it, Susan and Dirk would make a fine match. Traci’s
more tempered response had also been expected. She knew she could count on
Traci no matter what. But there was one more friend to hear from. “And what
about you, Ashton? Do you think I’ve lost all my marbles?”

The attractive
black thirty-something woman, Ashton Drake, beamed. “Well, you’re not likely to
find me nuzzling up against a horse, but I admire your guts and your loyalty. I’ll
come watch your horse. As far as Dirk goes, I think you should’ve dumped him
months ago.”

“Well,” huffed
Susan. “I guess I don’t belong here anymore.”

“Nonsense,”
interjected Traci, standing to fill their tea cups. Her ebony hair swung about
her chin, punctuating her words. “Just get off your judgmental pedestal. You
know we love you. God, we’ve been together since grad school days. Cassie’s
decision to make time to help her dad shouldn’t break us up. We can still get
together once a month, either in the city or somewhere out in the burbs. And
how many guys have you gone through in the last year?”

“Yeah,” Susan
replied, haltingly, reaching for the sugar cubes. “I’m sorry, Cass. My strict
parents saw horse racing and gambling as works of the Devil. Sorry I shot from
the hip.”

“No harm, no foul. We
all react too quickly at times. I do want to thank you all for your support. It
means a lot to me. This is a temporary thing, but it’s still scary.” She hugged
herself briefly wondering what she was getting herself into.

Six weeks
later a cacophony of April sounds greeted the first rays of dawn on the O’Hanlon
farm. Cardinals, robins and mourning doves sang to each other. Young foals
whinnied, seeking attention from their mothers. A light, bright mood greeted
the rising sun, except for the storm brewing on the front porch.

“I can’t do it. I
proved that already.” Cassie kicked at a corner porch post.

She’d been so
hopeful. She’d allowed herself to be bitten by that same damnable bug that had
infested her father for years. That bug carrying the
dream of the big horse
disease.

 Hope had responded
well to the training regimen. She’d worked hard. Nothing seemed to bother her
until the day of the race. Then things just fell apart. One race might’ve been
excused, but two races back-to-back?

And Cassie had no
answer—
not true
. The answer was to fess up to being a social worker, not
some damn magician with horses.

She stopped her
pacing and stood before her father. Quietly, with hands clenched tightly behind
her back she announced, “I quit. I’m sorry, Dad. But I’m not good enough.”

“Sorry?” her dad
spat out. “Not good enough? Quit? Hah, I never thought I’d see the day when the
daughter of Tug O’Hanlon quit anything…just rolled over and played dead.”

Cassie recoiled. Tears
filled her eyes. She knelt and rested her head on his knees. He held her. She
sobbed.

Her mind whirled. She
never cried, especially in front of her dad. Why couldn’t she stop crying?

Damn, Cass, put on
your social work hat.
Was it just because she couldn’t rescue her dad’s
dream? Or did it reach farther back—losing her mother, who they’d never talked
about, not wanting to get hurt again? Was she just afraid of the lure of
adventure
horses had always held for her? His fingers continued
massaging her shoulder muscles like he used to do when she was a child.

At last, cried out,
Cassie rocked back on her heels and accepted the blue bandanna her father
proffered. She laughed weakly and blew her nose loudly. “Sorry about that
unexpected display. All of this is getting to me.”

Tug managed a
smile. “You know running horses has more downs than ups.”

Cassie nodded. She
couldn’t take any more downs.

“You haven’t given
the horse a chance yet. Cassie’s Hope deserves more than bein’ dumped after two
poor races.” Cassie cleared her throat to speak. Her father raised his hand to
quiet her. “I know you think somebody else, maybe someone like Ed Harrington,
coulda done better with her.”

“I didn’t say,” she
blurted out, “that Harrington would do better.”

“Anyway, I don’t
want you to give up on the filly or yourself so quickly. Remember, you signed
on for six months. There’s still over four months left.”

A chill raked
Cassie’s body. Surely, he wouldn’t try to hold her to the agreement. He wouldn’t
expect her to endure the pain of losing that long, but why not? He’d endured a
lifetime of losing. Unfair!

“It often happens
in young horses, after a bad start or two, they just lose confidence in
themselves. They train well till the day of the race. Then they remember bein’
bumped around or whatever and really want no part of racin’. Honey, what we
gotta do is help Hope get her confidence back.”

Cassie’s heart
lurched and her mind scrambled to keep up with her father. She felt like a
kitten being lured by a string dragging across a floor.

“Sometimes horses
need to get away from the track where things went wrong. They need a change of
environment. In the old days, we’d take such a horse to a track where we could
run against a poorer class of horse, increasing the odds for a win.”

Cassie listened
intently. So far everything he was saying made sense. After all, he had years
of experience.

She watched him
admire the yearlings running their own impromptu races in the nearby pasture. He
sighed, turning his attention back to her. “I wish I could do this, but I can’t.
Only you can do it. I want you to take Cassie’s Hope to Wyoming Downs. They
have a stakes race comin’ up May seventeenth—that’s saying a lot more than it
is—but it’s a decent race.”

“Wyoming Downs!” Cassie
squealed, her eyes rounding. “Where the hell is that?”

Tug cackled. “It
happens to be in Wyoming.”

“The state?”

“The state.”

“You want me to
haul a horse half way across the country to find her confidence? Why not
Prairie Meadows or Canterbury?”

Cassie saw the
cagey glint dancing in her father’s eyes. Every horse trainer, every horse
player had to have an angle. She was about to hear one more.

“Altitude. If we
train the filly in the mountains, she’ll have a tremendous edge when we run her
back here.”

Before she could
voice her skepticism, he hurried on. “Olympic athletes do it all the time. Horse
trainers do, too. If this don’t work, Cass, if the filly is simply a dud, so be
it. We tried. We can feel good about that. You can go back to your old job. I
won’t even try holdin’ you to your commitment.”

“How long would I
have to be gone?”

“Probably two
weeks. It’ll take at least a couple days to haul each way. You’ll want to be
out there a week so the filly can train and get used to the altitude. When you
get her back, I’ll have her entered in a cheap allowance race. Then we’ll
really see what we’ve got.”

This was too much! Wyoming?
Hauling horses alone?

She searched for
words to tell him he’d gone too far and discovered she couldn’t find them. Her
excitement mounted. New scenery, adventure, a chance to make it up to Hope. “I
wonder what Cheyenne has to offer. Bet it’s real cowboy.”

“Not Cheyenne.” The
corner of Tug’s mouth turned up. “Wyoming Downs is in Evanston. That’s in
southwest Wyoming. You’ll be a lot closer to Salt Lake City than to Cheyenne.”

“Oh my god, are
there people where you’re sending me?”

“I’d be surprised
if you don’t meet at least one or two along the way,” Tug cracked. “Thanks.” His
eyes shone with mist, his hands trembled. “Thanks. Cassie’s Hope and I both owe
you.”

“You better believe
that. Guess I ought to start packing my bags.”

Looking around her
new surroundings, Cassie decided she liked the duck pond in the infield of the
Wyoming Downs seven-eighths-mile track. Otherwise, she couldn’t tell if the
place was sterile, or subtly exquisitely beautiful. Dust swirled in the dry
wind. Grasses were already turning brown. Mountains crowded the distant
southwestern horizon like so many sentries.

Shaking her head,
she grabbed a hoof pick from her back pocket, lifted one of Hope’s front hooves,
and began extracting dirt and pebbles.

“Nice lookin’
filly.”

Cassie groaned at
the strange deep voice and the too-familiar line. Couldn’t men anywhere be a
little more original?

Dropping the hoof,
Cassie glanced across Hope’s back and gasped. The deeply tanned hunk behind the
voice had shoulders that stretched taut a pale yellow polo shirt covered, in
part, with a thin buckskin vest. The wide cowboy buckle appeared unnecessary to
hold up well contoured Levi’s. A sweat-stained brown Stetson, tipped low, cast
a light shadow across his facial features. His worn boots were those of a
working man. This was no drugstore cowboy.

He stepped closer. She
could make out a scowl. Dark eyes snapped a foreboding anger. Raven black hair
framed chiseled features, searing them into Cassie’s brain. Her toes curled
involuntarily. She rubbed Hope’s coat vigorously. Who the hell was he? And to
top it off, he didn’t even seem to notice her. His eyes appraised only the
horse.

“Thanks,” she
mumbled, ducking down by Hope’s flank.

The handsome
stranger walked around the horse. “Very nice,” he drawled at last.

Cassie continued
grooming, doing her best to ignore the man.

“You’re gonna wear
a hole in that horse with all that hand rubbing,” he commented dryly.

Cassie
straightened. Her lips flared. Her cheeks burned as if on fire. Her eyes bore
into the man. “And just who the hell are you? And what gives you the right to criticize
how I groom my horse? I’ve been tending horses since I was big enough to walk.”

“Whoa there, don’t
get all bent out of shape. I’m Clint Travers.” The stranger rested a hand on
Hope’s withers. “I run some horses here from time to time. Didn’t mean to
impugn your horsemanship, ma’am.”

“Well, fine.”
Cassie pushed stray hair from her eyes. “Maybe I overreacted some.”

He ignored her attempt
at apology. “So, this is the filly that’s created such a fuss around shedrow.”

“What do you mean? I
didn’t know anyone noticed.”

“Not notice! You
got to be kidding—or incredibly naive.”

Cassie clenched her
teeth and glared at the stranger.

“Strike that last
comment,” he said quickly. “I seem to be putting my foot in my mouth.”

“Apparently you’ve
a large enough mouth for it to fit, with plenty of room to spare.”

“Okay. Guess I
deserved that. The fuss is simple. Most people who race here at the Downs are
working stiffs who run horses because they love them. Very few of these folks
win enough to keep their horses in oats.”

“So.” Cassie
dragged the toe of her boot through the dirt. “I love my horses too. And there’s
nothing wrong with expecting they might earn enough to pay their own way and
then some.”

“Be that as it may,
your bringing a well-bred horse in here from Chicago doesn’t go down well. If
you win, which is highly likely on class alone, you’ll have denied someone here
the kind of check that can make a real difference in maintaining a string of
decent horses. Yet it’s unlikely the purse will even cover your expenses of
traveling and staying here.” He glared and anger crept into his voice. “You’re
just trying to get a cheap win for your horse.”